


bellis perennis

by thomasine



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, human!Astral
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-13
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-02-04 10:13:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1775395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thomasine/pseuds/thomasine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It falls on Kotori to teach him a lot of how to be human. But that's not so bad, in the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	bellis perennis

**Author's Note:**

> for the zexal rarepair challenge. name comes from the scientific name for daisies, symbolising innocence.

He's awkward, when they bring him back. He's trying out being human, he says, so he wears an awkward, gangly body and uses it kind of helplessly, because sometimes he forgets that he's corporeal now, that he's heavy and human and visible too. He's... weirdly cute, though.

(had he always been? maybe. but translucent blue aliens aren't really cute in the same  _way_  that humans are.)

Yuuma is, of course, utterly  _useless_. He just wants to show Astral all the different kinds of food he can eat all on his own now, or all the things he can climb now so that he can still be high up even if he can't float any more. How to hook his knees over a tree branch so that he can hang upside-down from it, and how to twist around so that he doesn't get hurt  _too_  bad when the blood rushes to his head and makes him fall off.

(well. it's not totally useless, maybe. it makes astral smile, a little bashful and embarrassed - endearing - thing when she's berating them both for being irresponsible. that's important too, that it makes him smile.)

Still. It falls to her to help him with  _useful_  things. Because he's smart - definitely smart - but he doesn't really know how to be  _human_. He's watched them all, sure, picked things up, but that's not the same as doing it for real. So she's the one who shows him how to brush his hair so that it doesn't droop after Yuuma's dragged him all around the city for something or another. How to actually use his chopsticks properly, rather than the  _forget it, just use your hands_  advice that Yuuma had given him. How to do homework, and that it's  _not_  optional, no matter what Yuuma might say.

(sometimes it's more like babysitting than anything else, but she's been friends with yuuma for years. so it's familiar. nice.)

Rio-san has the same kind of trouble with the other Barians, sometimes. Or some of them, she says. Alit picks things up fast, apparently, and Vector had been in the human world a long time - something that always stings a little even now, to remember the way he'd pretended to be their friend and then-- ah, but it's in the past now - and Gilag learns well from Alit.

Durbe and Mizael are the problem cases, apparently, because Rio-san says she thinks Durbe wouldn't really know how to deal with people even if he'd always been human, and Mizael-- well. Rio-san says he has sticks in places.

"Ani's a problem too," she always says. "But I think that's more his fashion sense than his species."

(rio-san always asks about astral after that, and grins if it gets her a blush)

He's been human for nearly a year when he looks at her one day and says, very matter-of-factly, "I saw Yuuma kissing Alit yesterday. But I do not understand the point of it."

Which. Oh. She hadn't expected  _that_. _  
_

(or, rather, the kissing itself isn't all that unexpected. she just hadn't expected something like this from astral.)

Well. She explains, as best she can. That it's a way to show affection. That there are different kinds of kisses for different people. That it feels nice.

Astral stares at her for a few moments after that. Looks away. Bites his lip. "It feels nice?"

"It. That's what people say." She can feel her cheeks burning now. "I've never-- um. Kissing on the lips. I've never done that."

"Ah." His eyes go back to her, both wide and golden instead of the mismatched ones he'd had before. "I've never... I have never done it at all."

(he always does that when he's nervous or awkward. articulates everything very carefully and precisely.)

And... well. She's not like Yuuma, not impulsive and thoughtless the way he can be, but sitting there and looking at Astral with his pale cheeks just barely flushed with a scattering of pink, she kind of-- it's hard to  _not_  do the impulsive thing, and before she's really had a chance to doubt herself she's leaning forward - with a little internal  _kotoribingu, da watashi!_  - and pressing her lips to his.

(only for a few short seconds, and astral's lips are full but kind of chapped - but it's okay, she thinks and nearly giggles, because she's leaving behind strawberry-flavored chapstick when she starts to pull back, but...)

"People were right," Astral breathes after a few stunned moments, two fingers lifted up to where his lips shine faintly with her chapstick. "It does feel nice."

(kotori couldn't agree more.)


End file.
